Early morning in Melbourne

27 May 2012

Life in a big city means getting up at ridiculous hours to beat the traffic to work.  So here I am at 7.30 sitting in a lane of Collins St having breakfast and a really excellent coffee.  The laneways were far too crowded at lunch time yesterday, so I thought I’d make the most of the early start and take breakfast there before it gets too crowded.  Sadly, there’s no wifi here.  In fact I haven’t seen any signs anywhere yet, but I will keep looking.  Fortunately I'm staying with my old high school friend Claire who is kind enough to let me use her's. 

The laneways of Melbourne are narrow lanes between buildings that have been converted into crowded shopping areas full of bars, food and coffee shops, and a myriad of different seating areas for people to eat drink and be merry. They've been revived in the last 20 years and are now exceedingly popular. Not so good in the rain, if you ask me.

Melbourne's laneways.

A fantastic cake shop in the Block Arcade. There were queues at the door!

The Block Arcade.

A gorgeous window in one of the arcades.

Melbourne has some gorgeous old buildings, often squished in between brand spanking new ones.

View from Federation Square.

Melbournites also seem to have a bit of a thing for vintage transport. There's the City Circle trams, the vintage car below, and then this tourist trap of horse and carriage rides.

Flinders Street Station.

Fancy a carriage ride?

Melbourne also seems to be full of chocolates and little sweet foods - particularly macaroons.  Claire took me to a fancy cake shop for afternoon tea in some part of the city away from the centre, I couldn't tell you where. We ordered these two amazingly presented things with no idea what were were actually going to be eating. They turned out to be some sort of mousse-y cheesecake-y thing. But, oh yum! Note the ever present macaroons clinging on to the chocolate thing.

Gorgeous food! Thanks Claire!